The problem with SEO is Dead and Content is King

Is that it’s not entirely true. It’s wrong for a whole host of reasons yet nobody can really put a finger on it. Yet there’s thousands. I’ve been reading them for years now – at least 5. So why do they keep cropping up. Here’s my view:

They’re almost always written by journalists, bloggers and web designers who don’t like SEO. What they have in common: they all have strong opinions which they love, they don’t understand SEO and they don’t like because they think Google is taking away what is rightly theirs. None of the posts on this topic offer anything new, different or particularly mask this very well.

Channels

I totally see why journalists like Ken Krogue from Forbes post articles like this. What I don’t get is why they pretend that its’ not because they don’t like SEO or the internet (although this is the only take away one gets). The posts all have the same structure to the point you’d wonder if the Writer’s Guild hasn’t sent out one to all of it’s members.

The problem with content and it being King is that it is – its just that its all equal. Journalists would just prefer if theirs was. Most of the time when reading a post like this, the frame of reference is News, PR and Opinion. Which is the entire universe of a journalist. But it falls far short of the information and data consumption we need.

Journalists are used to having a secure channel to which to broadcast – and that’s being rapidly done away with by the internet. The answer is obvious but as human’s do, we tend to blame the sympton instead of the cause. Quite often, there’s a lot of ego involved.

Publishing houses are dictatorships. The Editor in Chief is the customer. The only benchmark for success is sales. So an increase in sales= good. And all content in a publication is measured by that and the opinion of the Editor. There is no other influencer.

In a web based publication – different posts/articles have many benchmarks: views, impressions, bounce rate, shares, comments, tweets, retweets and so on. Printed publications have to suit the lowest common denominator. Fine if you don’t need detail.

The reasons that so many traditional media companies have failed online isn’t because of online – its because they’ve taken the same privileged view of the world they used to have and assumed that people read it because they agree with their opinion. But the internet has a nasty surprise: people with actual expertise subject knowledge have been given a platform – and without the need for a journalist to give their 2 cents on it or water it down.

Don’t get me wrong. The place for Journalism is highly valuable online. But don’t think you have an automatic right to it. Don’t expect that only your opinion matters. Don’t think that you need to water something down to protect the decency of folks who might read it. Give the people what they want – give it short and give it long.

Succession

Content is King. But what is content? Is only well written content worthy? And what if it isn’t but people really like it? How much of viral videos and stories are even factual? What about online viral stories? The idea that content is good because it’s grammatically correct and every world is spelt correctly falls short. Accuracy of grammar matters less to people than some people would like to think.

What if 200 journalists and bloggers write about “SEO is dead” – which journalist is best? How does Google determine which to rank first?

The vast majority of content written doesn’t have a global channel. There are many bloggers, many more micro bloggers, millions of websites and hundreds of thousands of online media sites. But there are millions of forum posts.

The fact that Google (and with it SEO and PPC) is so powerful is that users can access content that is important to them rather than get a single view of the world of just one person’s opinion. We capable of many. And sometimes its not opinion or news – its experiences. What about buying a car or buying a trip. Is Trip Advisor enough? Do we really trust our friends? Is everyone we’re connected to on Facebook or twitter a friend? Do we want to do what they do?

Perception of control

Just because you’re the most published opinion doesn’t mean you’re the only opinion. Just because you wrote the main piece on Sunday’s paper doesn’t mean that everyone who read it agreed with it. There is no way for people to communicate up: It’s a one way communication chain and the minute people had a new forum it was doomed to die.

The end of PR

If there’s anyone who hates SEO more its PR. PR was the gateway to the editors and the journalists who thought they controlled public perception. PR is nothing without a channel – after all who really wants to read a press release? From reading newspapers, certainly not the editors or journalists.

Single Authority Figure

There isn’t one. And so your content will have to fight for a place with everyone elses – whether you’re a Pulitzer prize winner or a PHP Web coding genius – your opinion and your thoughts matter in varying degrees to different audiences.]

What it boils down to

I don’t like SEO/Google/Blogging/Individual opinion so I’ll call it dead. Because I am the network baby. It doesn’t work for dictators in other countries – its not going to work for you.